How to Reduce IBM Storage Costs
There are many strategies to reduce IBM storage costs, however there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
If costs are spiraling out of control, there are few different ways to begin attacking the budget-hogs in your environment.
There are several common places that storage is consuming your budget.
Here are a few we see every day: Capacity Upgrades Many times, customers are fighting rapid storage growth due to growing databases and applications.
Sometimes, the problem can be eliminated by implementing strict limits or accountability for end-users of storage.
However, sometimes that's not a practical solution and the only answer is more capacity.
Examine where capacity can be added in order to stem the rising tide of data storage.
Are there legacy systems that can be used for low-performance retention data? What storage tiers absolutely must have more capacity? Once you've identified whether or not you need high or low performance storage, find a trusted 3rd party storage vendor who can help you upgrade your existing systems at lower costs than your traditional storage vendor.
Ensure that you partner with a company that has the expertise and hands-on expertise to properly size, configure, and test an upgrade.
More importantly, make sure they have the expertise to troubleshoot problems along the way.
Maintenance Costs Often, renewing support for systems creates a recurring annual cost that puts a strangle-hold on your operational budget.
If the amount of money you're spending on annual maintenance and upkeep is keeping you from accomplishing project that would drive your business forward, it's likely time to investigate alternatives.
Third party support and maintenance partners can help you reduce storage costs by as much as 30%-60% without increasing risk of failure in your data center.
Licensing One of the biggest budget-hogs for many businesses stems from licensing costs for storage arrays.
Some costs are inevitable, such as replication software or advanced functionality licenses.
However, certain license costs can and should be avoided if possible.
IBM Capacity licenses or operating environment licenses (OEL) are one of the most costly types of licensing for environments fighting sprawling data and tight budgets.
These licenses allow storage arrays to "see" or "use" the physical capacity in the storage system after the physical disk is installed.
For example, a storage array with 20TB of raw physical disk will also require 20TB of capacity licensing.
If you only have 10TB of capacity licensing, you can only use 10TB of raw physical disk as the storage array will not recognize unlicensed capacity.
To deal with burdensome licensing costs, identify data that can be migrated off the licensed platforms and moved to another lower-cost or license-free system.
The usual suspects may include database backups and dumps, testing and development environments, archive data, and low-performance applications.
Moving these types of data off of expensive, capacity-based primary storage can now free up your environment to handle additional capacity without expensive licensing.
If costs are spiraling out of control, there are few different ways to begin attacking the budget-hogs in your environment.
There are several common places that storage is consuming your budget.
Here are a few we see every day: Capacity Upgrades Many times, customers are fighting rapid storage growth due to growing databases and applications.
Sometimes, the problem can be eliminated by implementing strict limits or accountability for end-users of storage.
However, sometimes that's not a practical solution and the only answer is more capacity.
Examine where capacity can be added in order to stem the rising tide of data storage.
Are there legacy systems that can be used for low-performance retention data? What storage tiers absolutely must have more capacity? Once you've identified whether or not you need high or low performance storage, find a trusted 3rd party storage vendor who can help you upgrade your existing systems at lower costs than your traditional storage vendor.
Ensure that you partner with a company that has the expertise and hands-on expertise to properly size, configure, and test an upgrade.
More importantly, make sure they have the expertise to troubleshoot problems along the way.
Maintenance Costs Often, renewing support for systems creates a recurring annual cost that puts a strangle-hold on your operational budget.
If the amount of money you're spending on annual maintenance and upkeep is keeping you from accomplishing project that would drive your business forward, it's likely time to investigate alternatives.
Third party support and maintenance partners can help you reduce storage costs by as much as 30%-60% without increasing risk of failure in your data center.
Licensing One of the biggest budget-hogs for many businesses stems from licensing costs for storage arrays.
Some costs are inevitable, such as replication software or advanced functionality licenses.
However, certain license costs can and should be avoided if possible.
IBM Capacity licenses or operating environment licenses (OEL) are one of the most costly types of licensing for environments fighting sprawling data and tight budgets.
These licenses allow storage arrays to "see" or "use" the physical capacity in the storage system after the physical disk is installed.
For example, a storage array with 20TB of raw physical disk will also require 20TB of capacity licensing.
If you only have 10TB of capacity licensing, you can only use 10TB of raw physical disk as the storage array will not recognize unlicensed capacity.
To deal with burdensome licensing costs, identify data that can be migrated off the licensed platforms and moved to another lower-cost or license-free system.
The usual suspects may include database backups and dumps, testing and development environments, archive data, and low-performance applications.
Moving these types of data off of expensive, capacity-based primary storage can now free up your environment to handle additional capacity without expensive licensing.